Nikolai Tsiskaridze spoke about "target performances" at the GABT

Nikolai Tsiskaridze, People's Artist of Russia and head of the Vaganova Ballet Academy, told Izvestia in an exclusive interview about how "target performances" were held at the Bolshoi Theater in Soviet times and during the perestroika years.

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"They [performances] were never printed in the playbill, tickets did not arrive at the box office. Not only that, they were bought out with such a condition that even the artists had no right to invite their guests to the empty seats. Corporations bought out the entire theater and the buffet. During intermissions, alcoholic beverages poured down the river", - said Tsiskaridze.

He recalled how in the early 1990s one small bank bought all the seats for the ballet "Swan Lake."

"Usually on the broadcast you can hear the hall buzzing before the performance. But here there was silence. Next they announced to us that there would be a delay of 20 minutes. We sat in the dressing rooms and listened to the stage honoring the chief accountant, the best sales manager. But still couldn't understand why there was no buzz. It turned out that the guards blocked the exits from the auditorium, so that no one went out early, drank and ate what was laid out in the buffet," - said the artist.

According to him, when the performance began, a quarter of the parterre was left in the auditorium, and after the intermission the actors danced "under the stomping of their own hooves": many spectators were already asleep, because they had drunk a lot.

Read more in an exclusive interview with Izvestia:

"Only the Politburo could buy tickets for "The Nutcracker" on December 31"